Fire in the sky? Nope. Just a tarp blowin’ in the wind.
Abbotsford emergency crews raced to the Whatcom area on Sunday for a report of a plane on fire and crashing.
It was, thankfully, nothing of the sort.
When crews arrived, they found something a little more mundane: a very large loose tarp being corralled by a Sumas Prairie farmer.
A motorist had reported a possible plane, ultralight or glider on fire in the sky.
“It looked like something was coming down in flames, I guess,” assistant fire chief Craig Leighton said Monday.
Several fire trucks raced to the scene and scoured the area for the plane, which Leighton noted could, theoretically, have been hard to find given the size of the area and the possible small size of the (also theoretical) aircraft.
Eventually, crews came across paramedics who had found the non-plane and its owner: a farmer whose large field tarp had gotten loose and blown up into the air.
“We put two and two together,” Leighton said.
Video and footage taken from cars on the highway show a large piece of plastic swirling in the air.
Leighton said the public is encouraged to call in when they spot something amiss that may require an urgent response. But, he said, it helps if callers stay in the area to assist crews to find whatever it is they saw.
“You just don’t know what you have until you get there,” he said.
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